something to chase

A little about time management…

CJ — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 14:45:34 +0000

..and how I think I’m going a little crazy over not having any in my life right now. With less than three months until the big day I need to start focusing more on getting things done.

Here is my list of things we still need to do:

Find a bus company to transport guests from the hotel to the venue
Order a wifi SD card for the SLR camera for our DIY photo booth
Buy/create curtains to go around the pop-up tent for the photo booth
Figure out linens for the tables and order them
Finalize the menu with our caterer
Buy the booze
Make table numbers
Dress fittings (April!)
Buy Jason’s suit and find pocket squares for the rest of the guys
Finalize our wedding music with the DJ (this is pretty much a Jason job)
Figure out if I’m going to do flowers or not for the bridal party, and if I am, find a place and get on it!

Not too bad, right? Of course this doesn’t include the little things I want to do around the house before our rehearsal dinner — which we planned to do in our backyard. For yard/home related items, here is that list:

Reseed area to the left of the porch
Weed side garden (it’s awful right now!)
Get the moss off of the shed roof
Paint the shed’s trim
Paint the trim around the back door
Finish the master bathroom
Possibly replace cabinets in kitchen with open shelving, if there is time
DEEP CLEAN EVERYTHING LIKE MARTHA WOULD

I have been getting a lot of good how-to’s on cleaning from Ashley over at Maillardville Manor. So jealous of how much energy she has! My cleaning chore tonight is tackling the couch which I am NOT looking forward to.

And since I feel bad that I haven’t been here enough to update recently, here are some photos of our wedding inspiration from Pinterest that I’ve been all over:

We are going to have a mixture of string lights and paper lanterns in white and grey. When you have the string lights, it eliminates the need to light up the lanterns — which will be too much time and work on set-up day! I really love this look and can’t wait to see it in action.

These table numbers are where I started getting an idea from. I want to incorporate black and white stripes into the wedding in a subtle way — it was the envelope liner on our invites! So I have been gathering intricate black frames from places like Home Goods and will use a black and white striped paper for the background. For table numbers, we will use the house numbers but spray paint them gold! I haven’t done this yet, so maybe I’ll take some pictures and show you the process on STC.

I really love the look of wooden signs, and this one is too cute! We will make one very similar to this for our ring bearer to use instead of carrying a pillow with the rings.

I love this! Our invites and save the dates tried to keep the color scheme of black, white, and brown (like a kraft paper brown, or brown paper bag color). I’ll probably take some time and figure out a way to do something similar to this that we can print and cut out for our guests — since we are doing a buffet, we don’t plan on actually having tableware at the tables themselves so we need to put something there instead!

For a long time I was set on doing mason jars with candles for the centerpiece… until I saw this picture! I spent the past few months buying tall vases from Wal-Mart and Target when I had the extra cash, and started purchasing twigs and extras from Jo Ann’s and Michael’s. I’m still debating if we should add a hydrangea into the centerpiece of leave it more just twigs… but it’s definitely darker than this is, and the bottoms will be wrapped in grosgrain black and white striped ribbon! Cute right? Once I have collected enough of the adornments, I’ll put one together and put a picture up!

Hopefully everything will end up looking seamless in the end! I keep going over the small little touches in my head and keep worrying that something (maybe the favors? maybe the linens?) will look out of place. But so far we are right on track!

Bet you didn’t think it would be pink!

CJ — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 15:49:04 +0000

…so many things are happening! It’s almost Spring, which is very good for our personal business as well as for JBK True Value. I can’t wait to get all of our wedding requests for Jason to DJ! We will pretty much be busy on weekends until October at this point.

In other news, Jason and I went to New Orleans in early February for the ARA show and we are more motivated than ever to make sure our rental department runs smoothly and continues to expand this summer!

I even went inside a Zorb ball!

Jason and I are now in the process of finalizing our wedding plans for this June. We are a little stressed but we’ll get over it. I have so many ideas floating around in my head that I need to start putting them out there for opinions! I hope to start posting more often about the wedding and what we’ll be doing for decorations and activities the day of.

Besides that… We purchased a new dining table! I am in love.

Why?

Because it’s pink.

These photos are from earlier this month but I know I’ve been terrible about posting lately and decided it’s high time to get them on here! We purchased the set on Craigslist for $160, what a steal! I tell you, Craigslist can be your best friend when you are furniture hunting.

Before I took these pictures I actually painted the left partial wall. I am being honest. That side of the wall was never painted until the table came in — then I realized it was about time I did it! You can even see in this picture my messy trim paint job. Oh well.

If you can’t tell either… our curtain for the dining area is a little short. This is because we used to have a large chest freezer where the table now stands and I was afraid any long curtain would catch on fire when we weren’t home! So I cut it and hemmed it. Now it looks silly. Curtains are on my to-do list!

I love love LOVE my pink chairs! They are comfortable to sit in, too. It’s so nice to finally have a proper dining area to have dinner and relax instead of leaning forward on the couch at the coffee table!

From this angle it’s definitely showing that I need to buy some type of area rug for underneath the table… maybe grey? Would a pattern be too wild for this already-retro statement?

So there you have it! My new favorite place in the house. Thanks to Jason for letting me have a pink dining set!

In future news, we are going to start renovating our master bathroom so stay tuned! We are going to see what a stained concrete floor can do!

Our wedding site got a new ‘do!

CJ — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:50:12 +0000

You can visit the site at jasonlovescj.com. Because we’re cool like that. PS I am OBSESSED with ElegantTheme’s “Convertible” theme. It’s amazing and so easy to use! If the theme was better suited for blogging I would have already changed STC over to it.

Progress: Main Bathroom

CJ — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 04:37:49 +0000

Here are a few pictures of how our main bathroom is coming along. I still have to re-caulk some areas, paint the baseboard molding, glue the sink back into place… but it’s almost there! I’m very happy with it. I think this project has given us the ambition to move forward on other projects around the house, too. For example, we now have a new faucet in the kitchen… and a new dining table and chairs! More on that in a future post. Here’s a hint: it’s pink!

These picture gives the most accurate shade of what the paint color looks like in there. It is called “Tear Drop” by Pittsburgh Paint. I used their Manor Hall line of paint in a pearl sheen so that it’s easy to wipe down.

The photo wall is mostly things we picked up last summer when we were on vacation at Bethany Beach; Jason’s family has been going there for vacation for years and years and I love it there! The silver frame in the top right holds a draft of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl.” I just ripped it out of a book I had used for my thesis way back when since I figured I would most likely never read that book again and I love that poem! Underneath it, which you can’t read because of the reflection of the glass due to the light (we don’t have any natural light in this bathroom so it is very hard to photograph!) is a quote from e.e. cummings which reads “for whatever we lose (like a you or a me) it’s always ourselves we find in the sea.” I just fancied it up with some interesting font choices. On the left, the grey canvas was a gift we received this Christmas! Isn’t it cute? You can customize similar ones over at Red Envelope.

The floating cabinet above the toilet is a part of the Better Homes & Garden collection that’s at Wal-Mart. Yes, I said it. Wal-Mart! It was crazy cheap and I was in love with the cottage-style of it.

Installing the faucet wasn’t my favorite project but I am in love with its shape! The best part for us is that it has an aerator. Our old faucet did not have one, and we weren’t able to install a new one because the threads inside the faucet were damaged. So anytime we or a guest would wash their hands, water came out at full speed! It’s so nice not to warn anyone using that sink anymore! You can see in this picture that I still need to re-caulk around the sink bowl, too.

So there you have it! Just a few updates and the bathroom looks and feels like new. I just wish I could find a magic cleaner that would make the twenty year-old linoleum look whiter on the floor, but I can handle it until we do a bigger renovation to this bathroom (most likely in 2013).

I’ll have more pictures once we finish the last few things on our list! We have a lot to tackle in the next few months because we decided to have our rehearsal dinner at our house for our wedding. Crazy, right? Yes we are.

Taking a mini-break to NYC (a post all about The High Line, basically)

CJ — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 17:32:47 +0000

Last wednesday, we took a break from the eastern shore and visited the big apple! We mainly stayed around Chelsea and ended up in Times Square for dinner at Planet Hollywood.

My favorite part? Visiting the High Line. I was fascinated by it! You can find out information on the High Line here, but let me tell you it is a park to see if you plan on visiting the city anytime soon. I really want to go back and see it in the spring when the plant life is green and growing, but even in the middle of winter it feels so peaceful.

The High Line was built in the 1930s and lifted freight traffic 30 feet into the air so it could remove the danger of the traffic from the streets. It stopped in 1980. It has now been transformed into a public park.

Here are some pictures Jason took with the camera. I’m thinking about framing a few of these!

Sneak Peak.

CJ — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 02:37:04 +0000

Here is a sneak peak of our main bathroom. We are about 95% done! I should hope to have pictures by the end of this week.

How one project turns into another…

CJ — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 04:54:27 +0000

So I finally decided that we should replace the baseboard heater in our main bathroom. Don’t ask me why I wanted to this week, but it stuck with me and we ordered it through our warehouse at work. Our old one was rusted over and I kept painting the rust to hide it!

It came in on wednesday, and we installed it that night.

However.

I made a mistake. I will admit it here for all to read because I am usually the one nagging Jason that he needs to measure, measure, then cut.

I measured the heater wrong. Our original heater was 36″ long and for some reason, I memorized that I needed a 30″ heater in my head. So we were 6″ off.

But we went ahead, because I was angry at my mistake and we had already started to take the old one off. See the rust? That is the main reason why this desperately needed to be replaced.

Please note: always turn off the breaker! Do not attempt to install a new heater without doing this step first!

The way our heater is installed is there are two supply wires that you need to connect. But Jason called his dad and rechecked the manual just to make sure.

Once we connected the wires all we had to do was screw it back into the wall and we were done!

As you can see from the picture above, Jason and I decided that we would just replace the baseboard molding in the bathroom in order to fix our mistake in measuring. Because our bathroom only needed less than 8′ of molding, buying one piece at Lowes did not break out bank (around $8).

Here is a picture of our bathroom without molding. It looks ugly. It makes me want to tear up the old linoleum!

So just like any other project we’ve done, I started thinking about what else we could do to the bathroom while I had the molding off…

So here is what is on my to-do list for this weekend:

Change the paint color
Create a photo wall
Add a decorative shelf behind the shower
Replace the shower curtain rod (old one is covered in paint and bent)
Re-caulk around the tub
Replace lighting
Repaint the vanity

Hope everyone has a great weekend! This sunday, I will be stuck between cheering for my family’s team, the Patriots, and my husband’s team, the Ravens. It will be stressful!

My workstation!

CJ — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 19:39:56 +0000

So after moving furniture around and around, I think we have finally figured out the place to put my small workstation at home. I’m so excited! I finally have a place in our main living space to blog, surf the web, do bills, etc. and also be able to run about and do what I need to do (cook dinner, laundry, etc) at the same time. I’m a multi-tasking type of person, obviously.

So here it is!

Right now we’re using one of our dining chairs — which we NEVER use because we don’t sit at our table (which is snugly fitted in-between the partial wall and the bar — I guess I’ll need to post on that tight space eventually) so it works for now. It is slightly lower than I need it to be to type comfortably, so I will be searching craigslist for my one-of-a-kind chair but for now, I’m satisfied.

To the right of my desk is a storage bench from Target and our antique grenade box on top (we found it at a wonderful store in Lancaster, PA that I am obsessed with). The wicker storage holds our DVD collection and the grenade box holds Charlie and Zoey’s extraneous toys. I think I’ll most likely be rethinking the storage now that it’s beside the desk, but I didn’t get to it last night, nor did I get to organizing the desk drawer which still has all of my makeup accessories in!

The owl, which I found at another antique shop near our home, will now hide all of my pens, scissors, etc. nicely.

The calendar I found at Anthropologie just before Christmas and it was marked down to only $7 and then it was 50% off! How crazy is that? I couldn’t pass it up. The fabric-covered “P” is also from there but I will let you know I paid a pretty penny for that one.

Do you also see what’s under my desk? You guessed it. My bag came in! I love it! I bring it everywhere.

So there you have it! Now you know where I’ll be blogging for all future posts. One more thing crossed off my list!

A place to call my own… almost!

CJ — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 03:46:16 +0000

I can’t wait to show you what I’ve been working on. But it’s nearly 11 o’clock and I have a little more to do to spruce it up. It was one of things I wanted to accomplish on my goal list I created a while back. Hopefully tomorrow morning before work I can snap some pictures and show you it! If not, I apologize for the wait and should have it up by early afternoon (aka: my lunch).

Want to know what it is?

“Make a place for myself to blog/craft/etc in our current home.”

Even Jason came out of the office from working on his mixing to help me out a bit. I’m so happy that I finally have a place to sit my butt down and not feel so distracted by everything else, yet still be in the main part of our home. Let’s hope I get it done for tomorrow!

Jason’s “Santa” gift, installed.

CJ — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 13:48:49 +0000

Each year Jason always gives me something “from Santa.” The reason this is because it is usually an appliance for the kitchen or some sort of daily-use appliance that isn’t a romantic gift. So, Jason saves himself each year by writing “from Santa” on the gift. This year, I received a food processor (!!) and last year I got a blender. I actually tend to look forward these gifts! It’s nice to know he is thinking of how life in the kitchen can be made easier and that he knows it’s not good to make that his primary gift on Christmas Day because it has an electrical cord.

So, I decided this year to do the same for Jason. I found the Audiovox Acoustic Research Outdoor Wireless Speaker and knew Jason would love it. The fact that it is sold at one of the hardware stores helped a lot, too. Basically, it is a wireless outdoor speaker that has a wireless transmitter that you can hook your ipod/iphone/etc into and play music while you are outside. Does my DJ husband need that? Absolutely not. But won’t it be nice to play music while sitting on our back porch, sipping margaritas and grilling? That is the dream that set this gift in motion.

Granted, we set this up on the first of the year and it was cold! But a girl can still dream of the future.

Here’s the package and how we (Jason) installed this beauty.

It looked (and was) pretty easy to install. It only had a few components, including the transmitter.

First, we had to take off the old light. I probably should have wiped it down before taking this picture. Can you see the cobweb?

Then Jason took off the old mount and installed the new one. They looked the same to me, but he did this probably for a good reason.

Here is our speaker waiting patiently to be installed.

Then was the tricky part. We had to re-connect all of the wires including the ground wire. This part was tough on me: I stood on my tiptoes and held the speaker close while Jason connected all the wires. This photo does not mean that Jason did this himself: we recommend two people for any new light install or else you might drop it!

Finally before my arms gave way we had it screwed into place!

Our new light/speaker in all its glory. Oh, I hate that orange. We really need to change our shutter color.